Built new computer and Live disk won't load

[nethardwareguru]

It isn't just new equipment that this happens to. I have an older P3 450 system. The Knoppix Live CD starts to boot and then suddenly has a problem finding files on the CD. I've tried all the cheat codes without success. Folloed ALL the download and burn procedures. There's nothing wrong with the CD cause it boots fine on a laptop computer we have. I posted this problem a couple of weeks ago and no one has posted a solution.

Booting from EXPERT gives the following CLOOP error messages: ZLIB decompression error -3 and Read error at pos 723838108 in file /cdrom/KNOPPIX/KNOPPIX, 55837 bytes lost and a bunch of Respawning too fast: disabled for 5 minutes.

I'm not sure what all this means but it appears to me that Knoppix/Linux has problems reading properly from certain CD readers. As I said the CD works just fine in another computer so it has absolutely nothing to do with how it was downloaded or burned.

[Harry Kuhman]

....There's nothing wrong with the CD cause it boots fine on a laptop computer we have. ..... As I said the CD works just fine in another computer so.....

We have seem many cases of discs that work OK in one computer but are still bad. They fail in another computer, yet another disc made from the same ISO file works fine.

I'm not arogant enough to say that I know this is what is wrong in your case. I don't know what is wrong. It certainly could be something else, not all boot problems are incorrect or marginal discs or marginal drives. I had one problem back when changes were made in 3.x versions of knoppix that took me months to find the combination of 2 cheat codes that I needed to get it to boot, and once I did it booted cleanly. But I have also seen plenty of people who make the "this disc worked on another computer so it must be fine" statement, only to eventually acknowledge that the problem turned out to be a fast burn, marginal media or a marginal optical drive.

I wish you luck, but if you can't offer another theory on what your problem is then don't rush to rule out that it might be a disc issue.

[nethardwareguru]

Actually Harry it is you who shouldn't rush to give your "one track mind" answer about it being a bad download or bad burn. Maybe that is often a solution but in this case it is not. So unless you can show definitively that is the cause, which I sincerely doubt, I would welcome any other constructive suggestions you have. If you have nothing else to offer, then I'd rather you say nothing. I spent a lot of time researching my problem in this forum before I posted two weeks ago and I've seen your stock answer countless times. It is extremely frustrating, when you are trying to resolve a serious issue, to get a boilerplate reply from someone who holds himself out as an expert.

[coffey7]

I just burned a new knoppix std disk and a damn small linux disk and a mandriva and fedora core 6 disk and they all worked in every computer in the house(5 of them). The problem has to be with my new home built pc. Something in the bios or with the hardware must be the problem. I have never had a problem with any linux disks I have burned or bought. Only Ubuntu has been a problem with my computers. That distro just doesn't like my Intels. It works on my friends AMD machine.

[Harry Kuhman]

... If you have nothing else to offer, then I'd rather you say nothing.....

You seem to have some anger issues. I responded to you in one other thread, it wasn't clear if you even did the md5 check or if you burned at low speed, so I asked. You responded, were satisfied that you had made the disc properly and I left it go at that. I didn't press the issue.

Here you posted that you were certain that your disc was correct, but supported that with a because it boots in other computers statement. Because it boots in other computers is a bogus statement that has been shown wrong here many times before, and I responded for two reasons: First I didn't remember you and didn't track down all of your other posts. It certainly does look like coffey7 has some fundamental problem since no Linux system will run on his box, but you don't sound like you have that problem, and could well have an issue reading the disc including simply a dirty lense (not that I any longer care). And second because I don't think the statement that a disc must be good because it booted on another system should be spread around without the other readers hearing that, by itself, it's not a completely valid test.

You inserted yourself in this thread in a discussion that coffey7 and I were already having. You are certainly welcom to do that and any welcome suggestions for coffey7's problem would certainly be welcome, but I actually didn't see any help offered from the hardware guru. You did suggest that it appears to you that Knoppix/Linux has problems reading properly from certain CD readers, but you didn't address coffey7's statement that he had already tried multiple readers on this computer or suggest anything else that you thought he should do.

[Harry Kuhman]

coffey7: You might want to detail as much as you can about the hardware so that someone might have a chance to spot what the issue is. I agree it soulds like a hardware issue. Just to be sure I understand correctly, you have tried booting on multiple optical drives in this computer and all fail in the same way, correct?

You mentioned that you have a dvd drive as the master and a dvd burner as a slave (as well as an sata hard drive). Does that motherboard have only one IDE connector (as many of them now do)? If you have 2 IDE connectors then I would suggest trying the other one, but that may not be an option here. I would suggest making the more demanding DVD burner the master and the reader the slave, and I would try booting with just the DVD burner hooked up and leave the dvd reader off the ide bus. And, of course, if you have an older CD reader available, try plugging that in instead of the dvd drive just as a test (an old CD reader might or might not need the knoppix nodma cheat code, try both ways just to be sure).

[coffey7]

Thanks for you suggestions. I have tried to change the primary and secondary with the burner and the dvd rom. I even tried to change with cd burners and just cd readers. All with the same errors. There must be some setting that I have to go over in the bios. At first I couldn't even load XP because I didn't have the ram speed selected in the bios. I just had it on the default setting AUTO. The only Linux action I was able to load and run was with an Ubuntu live Cd. I selected memtest from the main start up menu. Of course when I tried to load the main OS the system would just lock up.
My system is an ASUS P5B motherboard, a intel core 2 duo 2.13 processor 6400, and 2gb of kingston ddr2 800 ram. . The mother board only has 1 IDE input. I have the dvd drives connected with one cable(IDE). The hard drive is a Maxtor 200gb Sata drive that is the only harddrive in the system.

[Harry Kuhman]

The hard drive shouldn't matter. Knoppix might even have trouble seeing it at all, but since Knoppix doesn't need a hard disk that shouldn't be an issue. Still, as a test, I would consider unplugging the hard disk entirely just to rule it out completely.

You mention swapping primary and secondary. I assume that you really mean master and slave, since primary and secondary refer to 2 IDE connectors on the mb and you say that you have only 1. I would try the DVD burner by itself on the IDE cable and when that doesn't work the CD drive. Assuming that you have done both of those it's on to the next issue.

It soulds like you now have memory set ok, particularly if memtest will run for a while with the extended options turned on. I can't imagine why auto wouldn't have been good for you though. I wonder if auto not working is some kind of clue that we are missing. What settings did you finally choose to make it work and why did you choose that?

You actually have more memory that I've ever had. I would think Linux would be ok with it, but if you're still changing things trying to find the problem, I would consider unplugging half the memory and trying again. And if it still fails swap in the memory that you removed and remove the other gig. I don't have any good reaon for suggesting this, it just seems a simple test to do and worth while.

Do you have a volt meter? Have you checked the voltage on the power supply? Or does the BIOS show the supply voltages and are they safely in range?

[nethardwareguru]

You inserted yourself in this thread in a discussion that coffey7 and I were already having. You are certainly welcom to do that and any welcome suggestions for coffey7's problem would certainly be welcome, but I actually didn't see any help offered from the hardware guru.

That's what a forum is for. I was trying to point out to coffee7 and others who read this thread that this problem isn't only with new hardware. That might be helpful in finding a solution to this vexing problem that many people have posted about.

You seem to have some anger issues. I responded to you in one other thread, it wasn't clear if you even did the md5 check or if you burned at low speed, so I asked. You responded, were satisfied that you had made the disc properly and I left it go at that. I didn't press the issue.

You obviously didn't read my post. It was very clear what steps I followed.

You seem to have some anger issues.

You bet. I've spent two weeks trying to troubleshoot this issue. You never addressed the specific error messages I posted in this or the earlier thread. You just hit your standard boilerplate response that it must be a bad download or bad burn. Beyond that you offer nothing constructive.

coffee7: I tried booting from Knoppix 5.1.0, older 3.9, Ubuntu 6.06 and 6.10 and none of them will boot either. I've tried all the cheat codes and haven't found a combo that works. I've run memtest with no errors. I have an Intel SE440BX-2 motherboard and P3 450, Kingston memory. Dual booting between Win 2k and Win XP with no problems.

All these Linux live cd's boot to a certain point and then can't find the file system.

[Harry Kuhman]

You seem to have some anger issues. I responded to you in one other thread, it wasn't clear if you even did the md5 check or if you burned at low speed, so I asked. You responded, were satisfied that you had made the disc properly and I left it go at that. I didn't press the issue.

You obviously didn't read my post. It was very clear what steps I followed.

That's not true. My statement that you quoted above is about this post that you made. You made the I know the disc is good claim, but never made any statement about the speed that you burnt it at or checking the md5 sum in your original post. I pointed out, in my only post in that thread, the importance of a slow burn and doing the md5 check. You responded that the burn had been done at a low speed and the md5 was correct. You again repeated your "The CD works just fine on the other computer" claim; I didn't feel like arguing that different readers can have marginally different error rates and this can be a factor in booting, and really didn't expect that it was the issue anyway as long as you really did the steps you now said, so I left it alone in hopes that someone else might help you. But I have to say that problems booting Knoppix on a computer of that vintage are rare and when they happen it's almost always a disc/optical drive issue or a matter of finding the right cheat codes.

You bet. I've spent two weeks trying to troubleshoot this issue. You never addressed the specific error messages I posted in this or the earlier thread. You just hit your standard boilerplate response that it must be a bad download or bad burn. Beyond that you offer nothing constructive.

I gave you the best advice that I knew to offer based on what you told me. I avoided berating you for your repeated claims that you were absolutely certain it wasn't a disc issue. You may indeed be frustrated with the program, but I personally don't owe you extradonary effort to resolve your problem and anger that I didn't devote more time to this when I had nothing more to go on seems out of place. If you want me to address the error that you reported, the only times I've seen that error it turned out to be a disc reading issue. I didn't respond back with that in your problem thread because you had already rejected that it could be that and I certainly didn't know it was. As I say, I do not know that this is your problem, and you clearly didn't want that feedback, so not posting again in the original thread seemed quite a reasonable approach. I tried to help. Maybe I was wrong and it was something else, but I could not have known when I made my post that the disc was burnt at low speed from your first post (or even that the md5 sum was right, we have seen reports of discs with bad md5s that at least boot), and at least I made an effort.